Duluth Council Votes Down Street Maintenance Fee Increase

DULUTH, Minn. - The Duluth City Council was faced with the decision to increase the controversial street maintenance fee Monday."The issue at hand is does the council want to fix the streets or not?" said Duluth’s chief administrative officer, Dave Montgomery during Monday’s city council meeting. The controversial $5 street fee has only been in effect for a few months and the Duluth City Council voted to keep it at $5 a month for single family households. Multiple proposals to change the street maintenance fee were on the floor Monday evening. Councilor Jen Julsrud proposed bumping the street fee to $8.50 per month. Mayoral candidate and councilor Howie Hanson wanted to cut the street fee in half to $2.50 a month. "The reality of this issue is if the casino was a good partner with the City of Duluth we wouldn't have this discussion,” said councilor Howie Hanson. “Streets would be fixed." When councilors passed the $5 street fee back in June, they intended it to be a temporary fix and choose to review the fee at the end of each year. That time is now, and the city administration asked the council to increase the fee by $1.75 costing Duluth households $6.75 a month to pay for city streets. City officials say without a fee increase, they'll have no money for street reconstruction projects happening this summer. Administration says the current $5 fee only generates about$2.8 million a year which is significantly less than the $6 million the city used to get from the Fond du Luth Casino. The city says the $5 fee only contributes to the nearly $13 million for the city's debt, and doesn't leave room for improvements or preventative street work to be done."The $5 a month, as painful as that is, the reality is it's not even really accomplishing what it's meant to do and that is to really repair city streets,” explained city of Duluth communication director, Daniel Fanning. “If we can bump it up to $6.50 or higher then at least we'll get more work done." Many councilors believed the street fee should be part of the yearly budget and should have been included in the 2015 levy. Administration says they like having the fee because it can be easily removed if a permanent fix comes up.